So ive seen batteries with up to 30A continuous Discharge. Is this good? Too Good for a single emitter EDC? Will it cause problems being too much Amperage? Or doesnt it matter
Thanks
Jeremy
A 30A battery is good if you need 30A, but there is one disadvantage with high current batteries: Less safety. To deliver the high current they usual lack the PTC and do not have a protection IC.
30 amps to a single led? it depends on how much you are going to actually put into the led. Just because the amperage is there, does not mean it will all go into the led. Usually, well, almost always, there is a driver of some kind, which regulates the amperage going into the led. Actually, there is a lot going on there. The voltage change of the led at different amperages, since led voltage will change as the amps go up. The voltage sag in the battery because, as the amperage draw increases, the voltage will drop. Lot's of other factors. Wire sizes, thickness of traces in the driver board, (all resistance factors), so you cannot just look at one thing. Most always leds will not be pushed farther than the manufacturer's suggested limit, unless it is done by a nutcase, like a BLF modder
, so a high drain battery in an EDC, running a stock driver and led, will not push any more amperage than a lower drain, (say 8 or 10 amp max drain), cell would.
Disclaimer, I am not an electronics guy, so either what I said was right, or I don't know jack, s___. Many would claim the latter, including me.
The most powerful single emitter is probably the Cree XHP70 which can be driven all he way up to about 50 watts for short periods, although I think 30 watts is a more typical operating power. A single 3.7 volt cell (which would require a boost driver for use with an XHP70) rated at 30 amps could provide about 100 watts. My point is simple. There are no single emitter flashlights that can utilize a battery capable of 30 amp discharge. This politely ignores the other issue with 30 amps, which is you are going to have to dissipate about 100 watts, and that either is going to take a lot of metal, or you are going to have a flashlight that gets real hot, real fast. Realistically there are very few single emitter lights out there that can even fully utilize a cell capable of 10 amps (like the Sanyo 18650GA for instance). The down side of most batteries capable of 30 amps discharge is they have significantly less capacity than batteries with lower maximum discharge rates. The Sanyo 18650GA is rated for 10 amps, and is a 3500mah cell. Most of the 30 amp capable cells I have seen are down around 2200-2600mah capacity. I doubt the TM03’s IMR cell has to put out more than 10 amps, and that is probably the highest drain single cell 18650 light out there.
So while you are welcome to use 30 amp capable batteries in your flashlight, it is unlikely to buy you any more output, and it certainly won’t provide a longer runtime than 10 amp capable cell in any real flashlight application.